Jairam launches tea fund scheme for Kerala, TN

PTI|

Jan 05, 2008, 08.00 PM IST

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KOCHI: The Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF) scheme for replantation and rejuvenation of old tea plantations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu was launched here on Saturday by Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh.

In the next 15 years, about Rs 4,700 crore would be spent under the fund of which about Rs 1,200 crore would be in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the minister told a press meet here.

Stressing the need to aggressively push the scheme, he said, this is the last hope for Indian tea.

"If we miss the SPTF bus, Indian tea will lose its market to competitors like Sri Lanka, Kenya, Vietnam," he said.

Out of the 16,000 tea estates in the country, eligible for replantation, applications from 479 tea gardens for the fund have been received in less than a year.

The fund had been launched last year in Assam and West Bengal. There had been some delay in launching it in south India, the minister said.

Out of 479 applications, 255 are from Assam, 132 from West Bengal, 24 from Tamil Nadu, 18 from Kerala and three from Karnataka.

The minister said the government had decided to bring about important changes in the SPTF scheme to benefit the south Indian tea plantations with regard to area under replantation and labour.

Pointing that the SPTF had been slow in taking off in south India, the minister said the main reason was the fact that 40 per cent of the produce came from small growers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, whose plantations were less than 25 acres. This segment was not part of SPTF as they were recent plantations.